Sir, – In the course of her simplistic accusation that "Europe is sending a clear message: stay where you are and remain nameless victims" (Opinion & Analysis, December 23rd), Charlotte McDonald-Gibson references the mass sexual assaults suffered by hundreds of women in Cologne last New Year's Eve and perpetrated, at least according to their victims and, belatedly, the authorities, by gangs of asylum-seekers and refugees. Whatever about the testimony of the victims and the evidence of eye witnesses, your columnist is quite correctly more concerned with the number of refugee who were convicted by the courts of the crimes. And in this she is categorical: "No refuges were eventually convicted, but the tone was set."
But that’s just not true. Reuters reported on July 7th that the district court of Cologne had convicted 20-year-old Iraqi and a 26-year-old Algerian in connection with the events of New Year’s Eve.
Is Charlotte McDonald-Gibson suggesting that the question of convictions is the be-all and end-all of the matter and the testimony of the women so brazenly assaulted counts for nothing? That the inability of the state to secure convictions against specific individuals who were part of those swirling mobs of sexual predators represents the end of the matter?
If it’s wrong to refuse refuge to the children of Aleppo by wilfully linking them to the murders and massacres perpetrated by Islamacists in Europe than, by exactly the same token, it’s just as reprehensible to subpoena the children of Aleppo as witnesses for the defence in what undoubtedly was a mass sexual assault perpetrated by young male refugees.
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CATHAL MacCARTHY,
Limerick.